


Uncaged

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: avant-garde apologies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-29
Updated: 2012-06-29
Packaged: 2017-11-08 20:06:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock apologises with dissonance.<br/>Or he drives his brother away with dissonance; then he gets on from there.<br/>“Christ, it’s like a Monday-morning hospital round here,” says damp-haired John.  It’s a good thing he put on his pants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncaged

**Author's Note:**

> For ChapBook; cheers! And thank you for the music!

 

_“Which of the seven modes, if we take as modes the seven_ [ _scales_ ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_scale) _beginning on white notes and remaining on white notes, which of those am I using?”—John Cage_

Sherlock apologises with dissonance.  

Or he drives his brother away with dissonance; then he gets on from there.

Morning, half-eight, an extra Holmes in the sitting room, a Hudson in the kitchen, a member of the network (Eleni, Eleri? Not actually homeless)  on her way out the door with something small and shiny. There’s a cart in the middle of the floor containing rags soaked in something that had best not be blood. Sherlock‘s making sounds with the violin that might shrivel the corpuscles like a hypertonic solution.

“Christ, it’s like a Monday-morning hospital round here,” says damp-haired John. (Or does he think it? Who knows, anymore.)  It’s a good thing he put on his pants. His trousers.  Before he descended.

“It’s Cage!” Sherlock shouts over the hypertonicity.  (Oh, the case with the cacti and the strange piano, John thinks, _that_ Cage, the one who isn’t music, but who _is_ a genius.)

“Hopefully without the Class A substances,” Mycroft says over his shoulder on the way out (so John _has_ said it aloud.)  Mycroft’s umbrella’s up around his ears, and he slams the door. Grievous.

Mrs. Hudson's hands are in the sink. And no, not peelings.  Fibrous plant-parts or viscera. (God.)

“Sherlock,” she says,”Oh, never mind."

There’s a great deal, still, to not-say.

Sherlock plays Cage, something named for a number, John thinks,oh, the guy with the cacti, the conch, the silences, the word-games, the anarchy, the  mushrooms;oddball, of course you identify with him, star charts and the I Ching; eclectic like you; what is it that you want to say, darling, that you can’t otherwise?

_Begone, brother._

_I’m here._

He mourns with Bach, with things of his own.

“You know…” John says, and  he’s thinking of the window.

It’s been five months, three days, and as many hours  since John learned that he no longer needed  to look at that window, think ‘sad music,’ think “yes you are”, press hard on both temples ( three times, his self-taught stop-sign) , drag his fingers up his arms and leave the flat to grieve, hatless, in the open air.

In the kitchen now (lovely morning, clean-aired), Sherlock stops, shucks the lunacy,  gives John a smile (the warmest conspiracy), plays the first few bars of what might be--

“Mendelssohn,” Sherlock says, sings, “Die Nacht ist vergangen”--

Default to joy.

**Author's Note:**

> [ Mendelssohn’s Symphony # 2, the Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) Symphony](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxvr6GRsg6I)
> 
> “Die Nacht ist vergangen” (The Night is Departing) is the 7th vocal movement.
> 
>    
> [John Cage (1912-1992) (avant-garde composer,music theorist, artist, writer, and musical pioneer)](http://johncage.org/)  
> ["Imaginary Landscape No. 1"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVN_mxVntXk%E2%80%9C>)


End file.
